Red Eléctrica de España (REE) and Réseau de Transport d'Électricité (RTE), the transmission system operators of the Spanish and French electrical systems, closed yesterday the yearly capacity auctions in the Spanish-French Interconnection for the year 2011. In these auctions the entitled participants obtain the right of use of cross-border exchange capacity for each hour of the year, except in those periods with reduced capacity caused by planned outages in the transmission grid in both systems.

In both directions of the interconnection 200 MW has been offered and allocated. The resulting price of these auctions has been 2.11 €/MW in the France-Spain direction, and 6.69 €/MW in the Spain-France direction. In the France-Spain direction 5 of a total of 11 participants have obtained cross-border capacity rights and in the Spain-France direction 5 of a total of 15.

These yearly auctions, carried out in accordance with the European Regulation for cross-border trade, have generated incomes of 12.4 million euros. Half of these incomes, belonging to the Spanish system, are used to reduce the regulated costs of the Spanish electric system.